youthful sketches in two Wand of Youth Suites, the first of which we hear in tonight’s program. The Fifty-third Season of Faure’s suite of pieces entitled Shylock was written as incidental music for a comedy by Edmond de Haraucourt based on Shakespeare’s The Merchant of THE WILLIAM NELSON CROMWELL and Venice. With his customary self-deprecating humor, Faure claimed a preference F. LAMMOT BELIN CONCERTS for incidental music as a form, insisting that it was “the only [form] which is suited to my meager talents.” Debussy subscribed to the theories of correspondances between the arts even at the more vigorously than Whistler. In his program for the first performance of the Nocturnes, he described Nuages as “the unchanging aspect of the sky, with the National Gallery of Art slow and melancholy passage of clouds dissolving into a vague grayness tinged with white.” Fetes is “movement, rhythm dancing in the atmosphere, with bursts of brusque light....the Festival and its blended music [are] luminous dust participating in the universal rhythm of all things.” And of Sirenes he wrote: “...the sea and its innumerable rhythms; then amid the billows silvered by the moon the mysterious song of the Sirens is heard; it laughs and passes.” Among his contemporaries who were interested equally in art and music, Debussy came to embody the synthesis between the two. The poet and art critic Camille Mauclair, for example, wrote: “The paintings of Monet and Degas are sym phonies and suites of light, while the music of Debussy is sonorous impression istic painting.”
CONCERTS AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Under the direction of George Manos JUNE 1995
4 Marcel Worms, pianist Milhaud: Three Rag Caprices 2161st Concert HONORING THE EXHIBITION Gould: Boogie-Woogie Etude Piet Mondrian: 1872-1944 Schulhoff: 5 Jazz Etudes NATIONAL GALLERY ORCHESTRA Confrey: Kitten on the Keys Gershwin: An American in Paris GEORGE MANOS, Conductor 11 The Muir String Quartet Dvorak: Quartet, Opus 51 With Guest Artist Peter Zazofsky, violin Ravel: Quartet in F Major Bayla Keyes, violin STANLEY CORNETT, tenor Steven Ansell, viola Michael Reynolds, cello
18 Sharon Mabry, mezzo-soprano Songs by Duparc, Ives, Lili Patsy Wade, pianist Boulanger, Elizabeth Vercoe, John Jacob Niles, Katherine K. Sunday Evening, May 28, 1995 Davis, and others at Seven O’clock West Building, West Garden Court 25 Alexander Romanul, violinist Bach: Sonata in C Major Brahms: Sonata No. 3 Admission Free Szymanowski: Nocturne and Tarantella PROGRAM GEORGE MANOS has been director of music at the National Gallery and conductor of the National Gallery Orchestra since 1985. He is also artistic Presented in Honor of the Exhibition: James McNeill Whistler director of the National Gallery Vocal Arts Ensemble, which he founded. In March of this year, Mr. Manos and the Vocal Arts Ensemble were featured in Edward Elgar The Wand of Youth concert at the Louvre Museum in Paris, as the musical event in that institution’s salute to the National Gallery of Art. Mr. Manos founded and directed lor ten (1857-1934) Opus la (1907) years the renowned Killarney Bach Festival in the Republic of Ireland, which Ouverture received repeated acclaim in both Irish and international media. His interna Serenade tional recognition also includes the music directorship of the Kolding, Denmark Minuet Music Festival. Sun Dance Tenor STANLEY CORNETT performs a varied repertoire, including Fairy Pipers opera, operetta, oratorio, and concert music. He has appeared with major Slumber Scene American orchestras, including the symphony orchestras of Dallas, Atlanta, Fairies and Giants Baltimore, and San Diego, as well as with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the National Symphony. The conductors with whom he has worked include Gabriel Faure Shylock Robert Shaw, Christopher Hogwood, John Oliver, and the late Eduardo Mata. (1845-1924) Opus 57 (1890) James McNeill Whistler grew up in a musical household (his father played both piano and flute.) Although he did not inherit his father’s talent for per Chanson forming on an instrument, his interest in music was life-long and intense. In Entr’acte two of his most intimate portraits of family members, At the Piano (1858-9) and Madrigal The Duet (1894), loved ones appear at the piano, a reminder of the important Epithalame place music had for everyone in the family. Like the French composers who Nocturne were his contemporaries, he was strongly influenced by the poetry and aesthetic Final philosophy of Theophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire. It may have been the latter’s theory of correspondances between the arts that led Whistler to use musi INTERMISSION cal terminology for the titles of many of his paintings. As a frequent guest of another poet and aesthetic philosopher, Stephane Mallarme, Whistler would Claude Debussy Three Nocturnes most probably have been in the company of Emmanuel Chabrier, Saint-Saens, (1862-1918) (1897-1899) and Faure, who were often to be found at Mallarme’s soirees. It is not unreason able to assume that he would have heard these composers performing their own Nuages works in concert halls, salons, or private homes in Paris, or that he may have Fetes heard the music of Elgar on one of his many sojourns in London. Sirenes Edward Elgar was the child of middle-class English parents who were too poor to provide him with the highly refined classical education that was avail able to most of that nation’s other famous composers. Left to his own resources, Concerts from the National Gallery are broadcast in their young Edward taught himself to play the piano and the organ, as well as violin, entirety at 7:00p.m. on Sundays on radio station WGTS, 91.9 FM, viola, cello, and bassoon. He attended services at both the Roman Catholic and four weeks after the live performance. The use of cameras or the Anglican churches in Worcester, in order to gain exposure to as much sacred recording equipment during the performance is not allowed. music as possible. Eventually he was able to support himself as a musician, suc ceeding his father as organist at St. George’s Church in Worcester and con ducting a band made up of attendants at the Worcester County Lunatic Asylum. For the convenience of concertgoers By the time he wrote the suite entitled Wand ofYouth in 1907, his reputation in the Garden Cafe remains open until 6:30p.m. England was securely established by the popularity of such works as the Enigma Variations and the Pomp and Circumstance Marches. Realizing that the public < would be expecting him to produce a symphony, he began reviewing old sketch books to find musical ideas that would define his personality as a composer. On the way to finishing his first symphony, he refined and assembled some of these